Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Well, I've been working on my website and neglecting the blog, so I decided to revisit and post some pictures from our summer hols. We have been so happy to have sunny weather this year. It has been a fantastic summer! These are from a day trip to the beach...

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Sorry I haven't blogged for so long! I've had a busy few months, and I've now begun my Expressionate Photography website (still a work in progress but getting there). I'm posting family photo's on there and I'm planning on updating this blog too from time to time too. In the meantime you can check out http://expressionate.co.uk/.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

We had a great time discovering another local park this past weekend with loads of space for the children to run around. Lots to discover! I'm looking forward to going there again. Here's one of the photo's of Tamasin which I played around with...you would never know it was taken in a car park of a park... My children tell me they don't like this look... I'll probably look at it tomorrow and agree!

Friday, April 17, 2009

I had fun today with friends at an indoor children's play area with my three youngest children. I was even brave enough to go down the big inflatable slide with George. I quite surprised myself - I am normally chicken at anything like that LOL!

Yesterday I was out with the girls and George and we had a girly time. We did shopping (well, Supermarket shopping -not that exciting), we went to Starbucks and the girls had their hair cut. Tamasin and Charis look lovely and the hairdresser did a great job.

Here is another photo taken a couple of days ago on when we went out to the woods with a good friend of ours and her two lovely children.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

I'm glad its the easter holidays because all the children are home and their little touches are helping to make today very special. Here are the messages that they wrote in my birthday card...

'To mum, I really think you are the most brill mum in the world. I love you and hope you have the best 38th birthday in the history of mankind. Love Henry. PS Hope your b'day is great. PPS I know I have already said that"

"To mum i fenk tat you ar the bstie mum in the weld and I lub yoo xxxxxxxxxx luv from Joel"

Monday, April 13, 2009

These two boys do love one another! It is so lovely to see George's older brothers and sisters looking after him and playing with him. And he loves them all so much!

Today I had a bit of fun with textures again....

Had another quick play in between housework LOL! I'm having a cleaning marathon today but we all need a quick break now and again, don't we?

Here's George....he's not looking at the camera, but never mind ;0) He is saying new words now, like "this", and he can finally say "no" instead of "mo". He is so expressive with his face its so funny. He had his shoes on today and he wanted some other ones on which were too big. He took off the ones he had on, saying "no" and shaking his head, looking worried. Then he tried to put the huge shoes on. Then he decided they were not right, so again, shook his had, saying "no", and finally with great difficulty finally managed to put the original ones on again (on the wrong feet probably). He is also mad on cars at the moment, especially the one he got from granny and grandad which he even sleeps with.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

I went out yesterday with a friend of mine and her children plus three of mine and they all had a great time climbing trees and enjoying the great outdoors! Afterwards I spent about 5 minutes trying to do backlighting, in full overhead sun! The sun was starting to go down a little so it was not directly overhead, but still pretty bright.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

It's Adrian's birthday today and he is away from home. I have a busy day ahead so won't have a lot of time to talk to him during the day. But just in case he looks on my blog, here is a message...

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband! I love you and I don't deserve you. Thanks for being YOU! And I hope that you have a great day today.

Here is a picture of your littlest son who loves you and misses you...

On another note, if you're a photographer I want to recommend MCP actions where I got two free actions and tried them out on this photo. One is to sharpen the photo, and the other is to bring out the lights and the darks. With these two actions, you hardly need to do anything else. I also increased the saturation slightly, and softened his skin slightly with the noise reduction median setting at 1 pixel. I think that these two actions are FANTASTIC!

Monday, March 30, 2009

Adrian and I went out to the woods near our house to try out the video camera and camera, for a quick half hour today. It was fun to try and learn how the video part of the camera works, and of course take some photo's. Here is the first one of George, and I'll post some more tomorrow, including some action shots of Adrian....

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Well, my wonderful husband managed to get me a new camera, and it is fantastic! Actually Henry took these photo's below, and I think he did a pretty good job. He is learning a lot of the technicalities and really enjoys learning how to be a good photographer. These photos were taken indoors at around iso 2500 if I remember rightly. This camera is GREAT for low light photography. These photo's have not received any photoshop treatment. They have only been cropped and re-sized for the web. These were also taken at a shallow depth of field (I think it was about f2.8) so considering that I think Henry did pretty well on his selective focusing.

George is looking rather forlorn here because he has been sick all last night and all day today. Poor little boy. So I have been doing my best to look after him.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

I've not posted in a while, life has been too busy! But it's all been good. It has been children's birthday season, and we had twenty nine children over for a party for Tamasin's birthday, and seventeen for Henry's. George also had his birthday and he made do with a small celebration at our parent and toddler group at church, Teeny Tots. Have also been super busy working with Adrian helping him with his book (proofreading marathon!). But the end is in sight, the deadline is in about a week and we are well on track. Praise God!

I just tried to widen the margins on the blog, by changing the html code. I wonder if it worked...it means that the photo's will be bigger...

Added note: Yay! After a few tries, it worked!The next thing is to design a nice header and background and put those in..

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Joel has been doing very well at school. He got his school report and got straight A's. As an example of this, he told me the other day what he had been learning. He said, 'do you know mum, that there are seven continents? They're called planets.' Hmmmm....!

And here is the lovely sleeping George. His latest antics are climbing out of his cot, then wanting to be put back in so that he can climb back out, repeatedly! He also loves to roam about the house destroying everything in sight, and climbing up to reach what is out of sight. He can also now say 'bubbles' (as in bubblebath). He still calls Tamasin 'mum' (as well as me)! We are still trying to teach him to talk more, but he still prefers smiling and nodding. He is very cute, and loves to give us cuddles.

We will all be very glad to see Adrian back tonight after his week away. We've all been missing him, and it will be great to have him back again!

Thursday, January 29, 2009

George and I like to go into the garden (although it is cold, wet and muddy), to look at the fish and check they're all okay (in our pond), and have a little explore. Here is George trying to get the hang of riding the scooter. He is quite the perseverer!

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Hi there! Well we just had a brilliant weekend away at Butlins with our church, and it was fun! I especially loved seeing our four youngest children all on the Noddy's car and other little rides just to keep George company and look after him. It was a great time. George loved it. It was hard work running after George a lot but I wouldn't have missed it. It was a great time. My camera seems to be working again so that's good. Unfortunately I didn't bring it to Butlins. One of the problems with having an expensive camera (even though mine is quite old now) is that you feel scared to take it on holiday etc with you for fear you will lose it, drop it or get it stolen! And in our rush to get out we didn't bring our little pocket camera with us; what a shame.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

I have been so busy since my last post with life in general, and doing photography. I have done several photo sessions with my lights for various people, and it has been so much fun! I have learned so much, and yet there is so much to learn.

Unfortunately, the main instrument of the activity (aka the camera) has DIED!! Well, not exactly, but it has an intermittent fault where half of the image is black. I need to find out how much the repair will cost and how long it will take... I have heard these things can take around 6 weeks.. I hope not!